Comment by rayiner

1 day ago

Elimination of these jobs is going to be good for everyone else. It's going to reduce the unearned returns to people born with high IQs and aptitude for coding or lawyering or whatever, and reduce upper middle class wages. That, in turn, will drive down prices. The reason housing is unaffordable isn't Jeff Bezos. It's because 20% or so of workers get paid very disproportionately to everyone else and they've been bidding up the price of housing. If Google could fire all their engineers housing would become much more affordable for everyone else in the Bay Area (like it was decades ago before engineering salaries got so high). It'll be more like Iowa or South Dakota is today.

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rayiner

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boelboel  15 hours ago

Bay Area would probably stay extremely expensive as it's the American location with the nicest climate (although some would prefer socal/hawaii), has no way to expand and real estate prices tend to be sticky. Those already living there will be more like landed gentry, they'll spend their money in keeping their homes in good shape and won't want outsiders coming in.

I grew up at the boundary of a town like this it's like the truman show town, a few years ago they didn't want to replace a bicycle ferry with a bridge as it could bring in more cyclists from the (pretty rich) town next door lol.

  • rayiner  12 hours ago

    The Bay Area has always had good weather. But the suburbs of Silicon Valley used to be the stereotypical idyllic middle class suburbs. That’s why the housing stock is so shitty: much of it is cookie cutter mid 20th century mass produced homes. What changed it was tech company money.

triceratops  1 day ago

> The reason housing is unaffordable isn't Jeff Bezos. It's because 20% or so of workers get paid very disproportionately to everyone else

The actual reason is neither of those things. It's because not enough housing was built.

Leaving that aside I'm quite puzzled about something.

"Making everyone poor is fairer to the poor" is a curious idea that I've seen you express several times on HN recently. The first time I read it I thought you were being sardonic, but you sound quite earnest.

Given your previous opposition to communism and socialism I wonder why you have apparently changed your beliefs.

  • rayiner  1 day ago

    > the actual reason is neither of those things. It's because not enough housing was built.

    The supply demand equation has two sides. If you give a substantial chunk of the population way higher incomes in the face of only slowly growing supply, then you see skyrocketing prices. That’ll happen especially around the centers of knowledge work, which is exactly what you’re seeing.

    The town where I grew up didn’t become unaffordable because of Jeff Bezos. It was because of all the Google engineers making 10x the median income.

    > "Making everyone poor is fairer to the poor" is a curious idea that I've seen you express several times on HN recently…

    > Given your previous opposition to communism and socialism I wonder why you have apparently changed your beliefs

    I haven’t changed my beliefs. I don’t trust “socialists” who would use government machinery to artificially make people equal. But if technology and the market renders natural human inequality irrelevant, I’m all for that. Industrial machinery went a long way to making the physical strength differences between men and women irrelevant. That was a step forward. If AI renders natural differences in intelligence irrelevant too, that would also be a step forward.

    • triceratops  10 hours ago

      > If you give a substantial chunk of the population way higher incomes in the face of only slowly growing supply, then you see skyrocketing prices

      Alternatively, skyrocketing home prices meant companies had to offer higher and higher salaries to retain employees in a competitive labor market. If there had been enough housing perhaps salaries wouldn't be as high.

      Even police officers and other public employees in the Bay Area make more money than the national median. It's mostly because of the high cost of living, and that is mostly because of expensive housing.